Do Teachers Matter? Measuring the Variation in Teacher Effectiveness in England*

Using a unique primary dataset for the UK, we estimate the effect of individual teachers on student outcomes, and the variability in teacher quality. This links 7,305 pupils to the individual teachers who taught them, in each of their compulsory subjects in the high‐stakes exams at age 16. We use point‐in‐time fixed effects and prior attainment to control for pupil heterogeneity. We find considerable variability in teacher effectiveness, a little higher than the estimates found in the few US studies. We also corroborate recent findings that observed teachers’ characteristics explain very little of the differences in estimated teacher effectiveness.     

Strategy analysis in the health service

The operation of provider units, both NHS Trusts and Directly Managed Units, as competitive organizations in the market place, is as yet rudimentary. Although some have achieved notoriety through radical “business” behaviour, there is little evidence that they have adopted scientific business practices in order to strengthen or re‐orientate their position in the market place. Neither is there as yet any hard evidence that such behaviour would be beneficial in the long term.

This paper describes an exercise of strategic market analysis used as a device to lead and inform the business planning process for an NHS Trust. The primary objective of the analysis is to identify hitherto unrecognized strategies which would enhance the position of the organization in the market place and also to identify areas where business development is possible and desirable.     

Learning by Trial and Error: A Case for Moot Courts

This article describes the development of a computer tutorial for use in a history of economic ideas class. An early version of the tutorial contained ten topics, ranging from early Mercantilist thought to Jevons's marginal utility analysis. These concepts were presented in three ways: verbally, graphically, and in summary form. Student critiques were used to extend the content and revise the mode of presentation.     

Editorial

Technological change is altering the way educators deliver subject content. The phenomenal growth and widespread acceptance of the Internet has seen the creation of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) in higher education. For the ease of integration of VLEs in higher education, software companies have provided products such as WebCT and Blackboard. From a pedagogical perspective, new technologies must be evaluated in an effort to establish whether their introduction has had a beneficial impact on learning outcomes. To this end, this investigation examines the attitudes of undergraduate accounting students in relation to a number of design features and attributes of WebCT (e.g. bulletin boards, on-line assessment and chat room) as a VLE. Responses from 292 on-campus undergraduate students provided data which associates four factors with improved student motivation. This study found that student satisfaction with the use of a VLE is significantly associated with the provision of: lecture notes, bulletin board, on-line assessment and other tools (chat and video summaries). The diagrammatic representation of the variables identified in this study provides a useful reference point for those educators contemplating the implementation of a VLE.     

What Economists Do about Values

The paper explores the way the work of classic institutionalist authors can inform modern nonprofit economics. From the Veblenian perspective, nonprofit organization is explained as an institutional consequence of the pecuniary-industrial dichotomy. The Ayresian theoretical system is used to highlight nonprofit organization as a particular form of the progressive weakening of the institution of private property in response to technological imperatives. Based on these arguments, the societal meaning of nonprofit organization is shown to be in realizing instrumental value that is unattainable through pecuniary ceremonial behavior embodied in the for-profit sector. At the same, in line with the Veblenian analysis of American universities, the ability of nonprofit firms to attain instrumental value is recognized as potentially limited by the corrupting effects of the embedding pecuniary culture.     

Going to the movies: cinema development in Singapore

Using readings of Foucault's heterotropia and Friedberg's imaginary mobility, this paper analyses movie-going as leisure practice. In highlighting the paucity of research in this area, the paper argues that such practice should be understood as a symbolic interaction between people's behaviour and the spaces that they occupy. This theorization is applied to Singapore, where per capita movie-going is amongst the highest in the world. The paper illustrates how, in Singapore, the development of cinemas has been used to underpin land use policies associated with the relocation of residential areas and social policies related to the growth in consumerism. While effectively alienating older audiences, the paper argues that the spatial and cultural metonymy of the cinema with other primary consumption sites – the mall and the fast food outlet – offers young people reassurance about the growing centrality of consumerism to contemporary social life in Singapore. We argue that the cinema offers a temporary escape from the regulation of social life – access to ‘deviant’ space. However, this same consumerism that facilitates such access simultaneously denotes conformity with the dominant ideology: acceptance of the heterotropic possibilities – and limitations – of cinema and movie-going as leisure practice.